Gender differences in factors affecting rejection of food in healthy young Swedish adults.

With the objectives to better understand gender-related differences in variables of importance for food intake, and interrelations between these variables, 100 healthy, young women and 100 healthy, young men responded to self-administrated questionnaires about general food rejection, learned illness-associated food aversions, disgust (the Disgust Scale), food neophobia (the Food Neophobia Scale), nausea and appetite. The results show that food rejection and aversions were more common in women (69 and 38%, respectively) than in men (47 and 18%), and that women are more disgust sensitive than men. However, no differences between women and men were observed regarding reasons for rejecting food (predominantly sensory attributes), prevalence of gastrointestinal illness as an associated aversion symptom (95 vs 89%), type of aversive food due to associated illness (predominantly high protein items), or food neophobia. Based on path analyses, a model is proposed of interrelations between disgust, food neophobia, learned food aversions, nausea, appetite, and general food rejection in healthy young adults.

Lateralization of olfactory cognitive functions: effects of rhinal side of stimulation.

This study investigated differences in olfactory cognitive functions, in 40 healthy young right-handed participants, with respect to side of rhinal stimulation. The targeted functions were: perceived familiarity, episodic recognition memory, free identification and repetition priming in identification. The results showed that odors presented to the right nostril were rated as more familiar than odors presented to the left nostril and also showed significant effects of repetition priming in identification. However, no differences were found between nostrils in episodic recognition memory or free identification. These latter results indicate a rather extensive inter-hemispheric interaction in higher-order cognitive functions.